On Noman

Betas requested for permission slip. by Sierpinksi on 2022-02-20 18:03:58 UTC Beta request Reply

Edited, reworking to be funnier. I'll post a new version when I rewrite it to be better.

Um. Maybe spend some more time on learning the tone of the PPC? by Neshomeh on 2022-02-20 19:41:16 UTC Reply

First of all—and I should have pointed this out to one or two other people before now, too—it's not generally advised to post a link to something you want beta'd where anybody can open it. This means people who are not your beta can see your work in an unfinished state, which is potentially cause for embarrassment. It may also inhibit prospective betas. (I don't like to work under observation, personally.) The beta process is ideally a conversation between writer and beta, working toward the shared goal of a good story. A free-for-all open beta doesn't generally result in good beta work.

That said, since you DID post the link, I took a look out of curiosity, and I have concerns. This description of Noman particularly alarms me:

Aggressive, impulsive, reckless, and loud, lacking inhibitions, morality, decency, and a rebel. Not an intellectual, but possesses some intelligence. Noman prefers a head on charge at his enemies, until they are destroyed. He doesn’t back down, surrender, or negotiate at all.

A quick skim of the writing samples doesn't give me much hope that this is somehow going to be played for laughs, either. I don't see much humor at all. Now, a PPC series doesn't have to be pure comedy, but it should have a sense of fun and be able to generate some laughs. To work at the PPC is to have the weirdest investigator's job in the multiverse plus the occasional risk of death by absurdity. It's not a military drama, which is the flavor I'm getting here.

As a Permission Giver, I would deny this request in anything close to its current form. Please reconsider the direction you're going with this.

~Neshomeh

A response by Sierpinksi on 2022-02-20 21:45:37 UTC Edited Reply

I mostly plan on playing him for laughs. He gets mad, he gets twitchy, he has stupid plans. It's the good cop/bad cop or smart guy/dumb guy dynamic. He gets into little arguments and fidgets trying not to jump the gun. This is a dynamic about as old as the PPC itself - both Jay and Acacia got murder happy at various points. Agent Agent Noman is supposed to be that sort of twitchy "I want to be ultraviolent and have to hold it in" archetype.

I can absolutely see him looking like he's "serious business" and apologize for that, and I also failed to make the writing sample particularly funny, with only a few minor gags. I'll rework it all.

Thanks for the feedback.

Cheers. {= ) On good cop/bad cop... by Neshomeh on 2022-02-21 14:24:24 UTC Reply

There's definitely nothing wrong with going for that dynamic. I'd just point out that, when it comes to "being murder-happy," it's one thing when it's two basically normal twenty-somethings who know what they're doing is a) absurd and b) fictional—that is, they fully acknowledge that the canon characters and the OCs are fictional characters. It's another thing when the premise of the PPC is played more straight, as though all the characters involved are real, which is what we tend to do these days. I don't think that's a bad thing at all! It's much easier to make the case that writing well matters when the in-universe stakes are higher. With that in mind, though, it's much harder to play off an agent literally designed to be an "aggressive, malevolent" killer with no morals as funny. He's got to have some redeeming qualities, or the setting has to be treated lightly enough to get away with cartoon violence, or both.

How his foil is written to balance him is important, too, of course; I'm focusing less on Winfrey because I didn't see anything that worried me there. {= )

There were some things in the writing samples I liked, too, and I regret not taking the time to make note of them. Sorry about that. The writing itself seemed good.

~Neshomeh

On Noman by Sierpinksi on 2022-02-21 21:37:59 UTC Reply

I'm toying around with the character in the Discord, and he's a bit hard to explain, and I definitely did a poor job explaining who and what he is. His redeeming traits so far are a strange insightfulness, acting partially as a censor, and he does seem to genuinely care for others - although he has a weird, slappy, roundabout way of doing it (IE, downing someone's drink so they don't get too hungover, slapping cigarettes out of their hands due to the rules of his home canon dictating that smoking means certain death). He also seems unusually loyal to the PPC and surprisingly straightedge, contrasting Winfrey, who gets drunk, tampers with equipment and openly questions what the Plot Continuum even is. The comedy around Noman comes from either him being an idiot or him showing Winfrey as the haughty classist she is.

The two are stooges and rubes who are foils to each other, just by sort of slapping each other into roughly the shape an Agent should take.

Noman isn't an edgelord or serious business. He's not malevolent so much as inured to violence and always twitching for the "conclusion" when he can be a "good soldier" and do "his job". He's not going to be a grim, brooding man with his trusty gunsword or whatever. He comes from a canon that exists as a goofy excuse to have ultraviolence (It features zombie Jesus with a Desert Eagle) - and he's marked by that. He's from Madness Combat and will always be from Madness Combat. He is, in essence, that spirit of irreverent ultraviolence bound by the rules of the PPC, which then results in comedy as Winfrey tries to make him cultured and the two stumble about.

I actually went and watched Madness Combat on YouTube this morning. What a trip. {X D by Neshomeh on 2022-02-22 00:24:23 UTC Reply

Not something I would have picked up on my own (like a lot of the shock-value content that came out of Newgrounds), but it gets interesting as it goes on. I approve of the Douglas Adams references. I wonder if the Homestuck vibes are deliberate or maybe a consequence of coming from similar backgrounds and/or sources of inspiration? Anyway, I'm curious to see if there will ever be an explanation for Hank being the way he is, requiring an entire organization and Jesus Himself to oppose his murder spree. I kinda figured he must be the Antichrist (he is literally fighting against Christ, after all)... until the Auditor picked up Jesus' broken halo and got all demon-y. But I dunno. Maybe it's all a video game being played by some Trolls or something. {= P

Anyway, I get what you're saying here, and it sounds good! Different aspects of late 90s/early aughts Internet culture rubbing up against each other has potential, too, I reckon.

~Neshomeh